IV Ketamine and Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)

My practice is not a “ketamine clinic.” Mine is a psychiatric practice that provides ketamine infusions as a treatment option to clients who are clinically appropriate and are likely to benefit. I’m not in the business of providing false hope – ketamine isn’t for everyone.

I perform a thorough evaluation before deciding whether treatment is appropriate, and I provide extensive education to patients and their families/loved ones about this and other treatment options.

I have extensive experience and formal training in working with ketamine to help improve the symptoms of difficult-to-treat depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD). As a medication, ketamine behaves very differently at different doses.

With IV ketamine infusions and KAP, low, sub-anesthetic doses of ketamine are administered in the clinic for mental health benefit. In KAP, the low doses are used to induce an altered, more open state of consciousness that can help to facilitate progress in psychotherapy, often helping patients move beyond “stuck points” with which they might have found themselves struggling for years.

This is a specialized treatment, and one about which the general public has become extremely interested. The therapist you choose for KAP must be trained in the administration of the medication and in guiding you through the ketamine experience. There are many facilities and practitioners offering ketamine who lack appropriate training with the medicine and with working with vulnerable patients. Please always ask your ketamine provider/KAP clinician to share what specialized education, training, and experience they have had with ketamine.

If someone is offering ketamine treatment and can’t offer similar transparency of their formal training with this medication, consider it a red flag. If you’re a candidate for ketamine but you need services I don’t offer, I will refer you out to the clinic that can best meet your treatment needs.